It’s an interesting approach and it seems to be working for CP+B. It seems like this is a lesson straight out of this book I discovered while at Brandcenter. It’s called “How To Be More Creative” and it was printed in the 70’s and the only place I’ve ever found it is in the gift shop at the Hirshorne Museum in DC. One of the lesson is about how we stop too soon. I remember Jerry Torchia used to say this all of the time. We stop way before we’ve come up with the really big idea. And I guess this press release idea is one way to make sure you push yourself further and don’t stop too soon.

“One thing we do as we begin a creative project, instead of working on specific media, we write press releases about our ideas. For example, a press release for the Whopper Freakout campaign would say, “Burger King announced today they would be removing the Whopper from their restaurants.” It would go on to talk about consumer outrage. It’s a good way to determine whether you have a rich idea or not. If an idea is good enough for someone to write about, it’s probably good enough for someone to talk about.

We don’t want to find some trend and then do advertising that basically lies about the product to attach it to the trend in the hope that it will sell. If it’s Burger King, and we want to help guys who are being inundated with the notion of metrosexuality, understand that it’s OK to have a killer burger — that’s a great path.”